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Monday, September 8, 2014

Dragoon WIP 4

Almost finished! I had left a few pieces off the figure to make painting easier. The plume probably could have been added earlier, but the metal details on the left side of the crest and the black horsehair can be tricky so why make it more complicated by placing something else in the way? Plus I've got a bad habit of accidentally knocking little pieces like that off while I paint. I've done a couple napoleonic figures and the swords are always one of the last things I add. Again, they're easy to knock off and those hanging straps get in the way of a lot of the other details. The long strap is a piece of metal foil I cut to size. I attached it to the sword while it was still separate and then bent it into approximately the correct shape. The sword knot was also a separate piece so that was attached and bent as it would hang naturally. Then the part was primed and base coated before attaching to the main figure. Painting and weathering proceeded just as I had done on the rest of the figure.

One question you could ask is why didn't I wait and do all the weathering at once? Well, I wanted the different parts (boots, coat, and sword) to have their own weathering history. The process is a bit messy and imprecise so not very easy to dab mud onto the boots or dust the coat while keeping the sword clean. It was much easier to just go in afterwards to add a bit of dust to the scabbard and straps.

For the plume I chose a two color pattern. There seems to be a variety of plume colors with not a lot of standardization among the regiments. My reference book mentions solid color options (white, red, or crimson) and multi-color options (green with regimental color, red and green, red and white, white and yellow, black with regimental color, green and yellow) and lists regiments that were seen with each. Based on my reading, I'd guess you could have any regiment with just about any of the plume variations. But sticking to a color-regiment pairing that is based on a historical reference, I chose to do white and yellow for the 22nd Dragoon Regiment (although based on the uniform he could be in the 22nd, 23rd, or 24th regiments).

3 comments:

Are you planning on anything else for the bayonet? Is it a three sided spike? The front face seems awful bright to me in the first photo. Maybe a little blood and mud for it? I looked, briefly, for a reference photo but couldn't find anything that looked very similar.

I hadn't planned on doing anything else, but I'll take another look at it. I think part of it is just the lighting. Those scale 75 metallics are pretty shiny, even the dark silver ones. If you look at the third image that's the same surface just not getting hit directly with the lights. I may go in and tweak the metal a bit, then add some dirt. I probably won't do any blood. Don't want this guy to be too gory.